In the large mining industry, due to high operational costs, it is increasingly necessary to be equipped with systems that allow for mine operation optimization.
Particularly, huge mining trucks account for a relevant part of the mine operational costs. For this reason, every improvement associated with mining trucks operation implies contributions to the overall productivity of the mine. A significant factor in the operation of mining trucks is the frequency with which the truck tank is filled with fuel and other fluids. The lack of fuel or other fluids can make the truck stop and even cause damage, resulting in mine loss productivity and efficiency.
Measuring tank levels by floater systems or devices is widely known from, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,421,895, JP 2009-186283 and US 2013/0018604), which are installed in the tank interior and, by a transducer (typically a variable resistor), the floater position in the tank is converted into an electrical signal, which can be interpreted as the fluid level in the tank. Those mechanisms are commonly used in several types of vehicle tanks and/or other tanks. However, those measurement systems are inaccurate and not resistant to the fast fluid-filling systems used currently in the large mining industry.
There are several alternative measurement systems for tank levels such as ultrasonic sensors (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,793,705 and 6,484,088) and capacitive sensors (U.S. Pat. No. 6,490,920 and WO 2012/095838). However, none of those systems have an adequate resistor to be used in the trucks of the large mining industry, and they are not adapted to resist tank rapid fluid-filling systems.
It is worth mentioning that to improve truck availability in the mining industry, a fast fluid-filling technology was implemented to reduce waiting times during fuel replenishment. That fast fluid-filling system allows reducing fuel tank filling time by 5 times, having a huge impact on productivity and availability of mining trucks. However, that rapid fuel-filling system destroys fuel level measurement elements due to the turbulence and pressure generated by injecting high pressure fuel into the tank.
As a result, the fuel sensor is damaged and the truck may become unusable during a valuable period and then, the decision of going to the fuel replenishment area is in the hands of the truck operator's experience, thereby producing huge economic losses as a result of the operator's bad practices and/or sub-optimal refueling in trucks.
Therefore, there is a need to have a measurement device for fuel and/or other fluid levels that is resistant to rapid fuel-filling and/or severe environmental conditions of the mine.
There is also a need to integrate telemetry and connectivity solutions that allow for monitoring the levels of fuel and other fluids remotely for the purpose of managing truck operation centrally and taking actions accordingly to improve the fleet productivity.